We are back to India after 2 years of our stay in the USA. A lot seems to have changed while we were away. As we grapple with the substantial context switch from bay area to Pune, I muse: Even though air travel and other technology has made life faster, ‘adapting’ is still a function of psychology and biology, it takes its own time!
Suddenly it all feels so cramped. Houses look unkempt, roads look narrow, driving on the left side of the lane seems abnormal, people seem far too many…. things I maybe never noticed earlier are now an eyesore. The personal interaction I yearned for in the USA now seems intrusive. When we went to get the sim card for a new phone number the sales guy began asking me: “How much do you talk on phone, how much data do you use, do you text often?” These are routine questions, but to me it seemed like an interrogation. I had grown accustomed to being shown brochures of the choices available and then selecting an option, rather than give out details about my phone usage to a stranger. Has it really been just two years? I hope this dissonance ends soon.
I was always a planner, but the unpredictability of India kept it in check:there were always myriad contingencies that could not be planned for. In USA everything worked seamlessly with clockwork precision and predictability. In such a system one cannot blame anyone/anything except oneself for a plan not working out well. This increased my ownership and unleashed the ‘monster planner’ in me. My husband had started calling me a control freak. I wanted to know everything upfront. For example if we were planning an outing to San Francisco I would plan for: what time should we start from home to be able to get a parking spot, where to park, what to do if that parking spot was full, what if we have to park really far, what mode of public transport would reach us to our destination, would it be cost effective, and on and on and on. There was hardly any spontaneity left. The fact of the matter was that most plans worked well! I would get a huge rush every time this happened, it fueled my obsessiveness. It was turning me into a perfectionist, somewhat intolerant and impatient. The uncertainty of India is humbling and a welcome reminder to let off control from self to the unknown. I am re- learning to be spontaneous again,to keep faith, to believe in higher power and let things be, to say "so what" if things don't work according to plan.
USA had made me so independent, or rather device dependent. If you want something- look up the internet, find the best choice from reviews, find the stores in which it is available and go buy that exact thing. Here in India everyone has recommendations: do this, buy that, go there,etc. You get so much advise at the drop of a hat! A skill now required is to be able to listen and filter necessary information, to stand your ground, and then make a choice. All this without losing your temper. Its challenging but I am working at it :)
In a fast changing global world, the ability to not only learn but also unlearn the earlier learnt behavior, as well as relearn a previously forgotten skill are mandatory for survival. This is a measure of adaptability . As Charles Darwin quotes “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
Quote from the sunscreen song “ Live in northern California but move out of it before it makes you too soft. Live in New York City but move out of it before it makes you too harsh’’
Keep moving, keep adapting, keep growing!
The sunscreen song:
